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Space is inaccessible to the vast majority of us, but it's not as far away as you might think
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The Von Karmen Line, which is the official boundary between space and the Earth's atmosphere
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is only 62 miles above sea level. If you were somehow able to drive a car straight up at 50
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miles per hour, you would reach space in an hour and 15 minutes. That's shorter than some people's
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daily commutes. Hi, I'm Erin McCarthy, Editor-in-Chief of Mental Floss, and this is The
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List Show. That's just one fact about space that we're covering today that is going to warp your
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your mind. Let's get started. Based on the perception-shifting space fact from the intro
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you may be surprised to hear just how far away the moon really is. While the exact number varies
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throughout the lunar cycle, the average distance comes out to 238,855 miles. If you were to drive
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to the moon at the same speed posed in our last hypothetical, it would take you nearly 200 days
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to get there. To help you visualize that distance, imagine all the other planets in our solar system
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Squeezed side by side, you could technically fit them all between the Earth and the Moon
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under the right conditions. They would only fit when the Moon is at its apogee
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or farthest distance from our planet in its cycle. And no, Pluto is not included in this
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calculation. Sorry, little guy. Now that you've processed that distance, picture our solar system's asteroid belt. Science fiction would have you believe that flying a
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spaceship through an asteroid belt is a bit like sprinting through a minefield In reality traversing it would require little to no fancy maneuvering That because the average distance between asteroids in the region is more than double the distance between the Earth and the Moon Every spacecraft that ventured to Jupiter and beyond has safely crossed it
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even without Han Solo behind the controls. But Earth has its own sort of minefield
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In Lower Earth Orbit, or LEO, there is a ton of space junk flying around. And no
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not a handful of giant pieces like broken satellites. Literally millions of pieces of
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of debris, most of which are too small to track. And if a cloud of space trash doesn't
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sound too intimidating, just know that most are traveling roughly seven times as fast as
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a bullet. And that is why I'll never be going to space. The way time works in space is also hard to wrap your head around. Take Venus. Our neighbor
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takes 225 Earth days to orbit the sun, which isn't too dramatic of a difference from the
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365 days it takes our planet. Things start to get trippy when you measure days on the
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second planet from the sun. It takes Venus 243 Earth days to complete one full rotation
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around its axis, which means its days are longer than its years. I can't even begin
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to think about how vacation days would work there. But considering its surface averages
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around 864 degrees Fahrenheit, that would likely be the least of my concerns
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The Sun is obviously the largest body in our corner of the universe, but it's difficult
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to comprehend just how massive it is. It accounts for 99.8% of all the mass in our solar system
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That means all the planets, comets, and asteroids orbiting around it make up less than 0.2%
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The sun mass exceeds the Earth it more than 333 times over To put things on a human scale if the sun were the size of a basketball the Earth would be no larger than a pinhead When you think of space
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you likely picture planets, stars, and comets. In reality, these visible celestial bodies make
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up just a fraction of the universe. Four percent, to be precise. So does that mean the other 96
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is just empty space? Scientists used to think this was the case, but they now know that most
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of the universe is made up of dark matter and dark energy. These essential components of space don't
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reflect, absorb, or radiate light, which makes them difficult to study. What they are exactly
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remains a mystery. One theory is that they're made of totally new kinds of particles that
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science has yet to identify. While many of these qualify as fun facts, this next one is more
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existentially terrifying. At the center of our galaxy sits Sagittarius A star, a supermassive
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black hole capable of consuming entire stars. It's four million times as massive as our sun
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which we've just established is pretty big in relative terms. Crossing the black hole's event
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horizon, or point of no return, would spell certain death for an unlucky space explorer
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But fortunately, we don't have to worry about that on Earth. That region of our galaxy is located
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about 26,000 light years away, which is more than a comfortably safe distance
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Sagittarius A star's impressive 14.6 million mile diameter is just a small fraction of the
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galaxy's total size. The Milky Way's width adds up to 100,000 light years. And just as the Earth
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makes its yearly orbit around the Sun, our solar system is making its way around the galaxy
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albeit on a much longer timeline It takes us 225 million years to complete a full circuit Since the Sun formed 4 billion years ago it only completed the trip 20 times When the dinosaurs roamed the Earth surface during the Cretaceous Period our planet was sitting on the opposite side of the galaxy
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from where it is today, and it will take another 100 million years to reach that spot again
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Even not taking its odyssey around the Milky Way into consideration, Earth is constantly
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on the move. It makes its daily rotation at an approximate rate of 1,000 miles per hour
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at the equator, and slower as you move towards the poles. That means that even when you're
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asleep in bed, you're traveling faster than the speed of sound, without realizing it
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While our home planet rotates around its axis, it's also revolving around the sun at a rate
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of 67,000 miles per hour. If you were traveling that fast in a plane, it would take you six
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minutes to fly from Tokyo to New York City. Luckily, the Earth moves at a constant rate
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so this motion is imperceptible to us. But it's still fun to imagine yourself riding
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a giant amusement park ride through space the next time you're bored
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are occasionally treated to supernovas, or the brilliant explosions that occur at the
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end of a star's life cycle. If you're ever lucky enough to witness one of these celestial
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events, you'll be viewing it not only through the vast expanse of space, but also through
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time. All the visible stars in the sky, besides the sun, are light years away, which means
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it takes their visual information a long time, in some cases millennia, to reach our eyes
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So a supernova that's visible from Earth today is basically just a transmission of an event
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that happened thousands of years ago. In addition to making you feel small, space also has a way of making life feel very short
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That's all for today's episode of The List Show. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time
